Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
From evocative faces of orphans and widows, to colorful images from refugee camps, each photograph Kara Orendorf takes tells a story of the struggles and triumphs of some of the world’s most impoverished people.
Her hope is that people will see her images and be moved to help.
“My whole heart behind photography is very much linked to bringing justice, to make people aware and hopefully raise up people who will make a difference,” Kara said.
“People want to help for the most part, but they don’t know how to, or they aren’t even aware these problems are happening. I know I wasn’t until I was actually over there and saw it for myself.”
The stories behind the photographs are as diverse as the people in them.
There’s Karen, the Kenyan orphan who was found in a dumpster, who rarely smiled until Kara and other missionaries ministered to her.
There are the hordes of women in Thailand who live and work in landfills scavenging plastic for two cents a day, and 24-year-old John, who fled to northern Thailand to live in a refugee camp when his village was torched by the Burmese government.
The 26-year-old began her forays into photography six years ago in Nashville, with her dad’s old SLR Nikon FG from the ‘70s and a great deal of encouragement from her high school photo class teacher. She later graduated from Nashville State Community College with an associate’s degree in photography.
“Donna, who was my color photo teacher,” Kara said, “taught me that photography is your voice and you have to find out what you want to say.”
Her initial work in photography focused on more personal images detailing her own spiritual journey with God.
“They’re all pre-visualized images where I have a very specific idea of what and where I want to shoot,” Kara said.
“All those images are also visions God has shown me. He speaks to me through pictures.”
One potent example is a photograph of a dark-haired woman standing in the ocean with three sea gulls circling above her head, which Kara printed by alternative process onto a sheet of etched copper.
“When I got my negatives back and saw this image I just started laughing, because this image is the evidence and proof that everything I do in photography is not me,” Kara said.
Out of the hundreds of birds on the beach that day, only three strategically placed gulls appeared above the girl’s head in the final image.
“This image is about how the Holy Spirit – the Trinity- is always with us, whether we can see it or not,” Kara said.
In 2007, Kara moved away from premeditated shots into a new season of photography when she joined a Discipleship Training School in California, and traveled to Kenya and Rwanda. It was there that she began to take more spur-of-the-moment shots.
“[With my overseas work] my goal is to capture the stories of other people – the faces that have changed and impacted my life forever – to bring them back and share them with people here,” she said.
For both types of her photography, the prep work is the same – lots of prayer. “Every time I shoot I just pray for Him use me to speak whatever He wants to speak, and to capture what He wants to capture,” she said.
Currently Kara is working on producing and promoting a series of color slide photographs taken while she was in Thailand, Burma and Cambodia in 2008. As for photography’s future role in her life, Kara said that although it will be a part of her work, it won’t be the main focus.
“First and foremost my heart is to give my life away to those in need,” Kara said. “That’s my goal. Everything else is secondary. Art, music, everything.”
To see a gallery of Kara’s Africa series, go to our Flicker photostream. Also, check out more of her past and present work at www.karameshell.com.
